The Journal provides analysis of the SEC college-football game between No. 1 Alabama and No. 6 Texas A&M. Rachel Bachman provides commentary from Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, while Ben Cohen and Jordan Sargent offer analysis on the broadcast. The Aggies beat the Crimson Tide 29-24 last season. Here’s our coverage of everything you need to know before the 3:30 p.m. ET kickoff.

Ten months ago Johnny Manziel disappeared into the Alabama defensive line, nearly dropped the ball, reappeared like a lost coal miner and fired a 10-yard touchdown pass to Ryan Swope to give Texas A&M a shocking 14-0 lead on the No. 1 Crimson Tide. Even more surprising, the No. 15 Aggies held onto the lead—in Tuscaloosa, no less—and Manziel went on to achieve a level of fame somewhere between Justin Bieber and John Dillinger.

With that victory Manziel won the Heisman Trophy and the Aggies erased any doubt that they belonged at the highest level of college football. Remember the smirks and skepticism that greeted Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin at SEC media days last year, before the Aggies played a down in football’s ruling conference? Now there are billboards of Sumlin towering over Texas freeways, steely-gazed in sunglasses, alongside the words “COMMANDER IN CHIEF.” And they don’t feel hyperbolic.

There was a tiny footnote to the Aggies’ incredible run last season: The 29-24 loser to A&M went on to win the national championship. In doing so Alabama captured its third title in four years and added another brick to its already legendary edifice. The color of college football remains houndstooth.

But the Tide, which return dead-on quarterback A.J. McCarron for a third starting season, looked vulnerable in their first game of the season against Virginia Tech. While Christion Jones was scoring on a punt return, kick return and basically from everywhere but the house where Paul “Bear” Bryant grew up, Alabama’s rebuilt offensive line looked mortal. The Tide gained just 96 yards rushing—75 by top running back T.J. Yeldon—against a stout defense, and McCarron threw a rare interception.

That was ominous news for several reasons. One, because Alabama’s slim 35-10 victory over the unranked Hokies sent Alabama coach Nick Saban into the Tide’s idle week in a bad mood, and he doesn’t need any assistance in that area.

Also, it meant that the Tide showed vulnerability in the same places as they did against A&M. Alabama managed just 122 yards rushing against the Aggies last season, way under the Tide’s 227-yard average, and during the game McCarron threw two of the three interceptions he threw all season—three!

Against Virginia Tech the Tide also didn’t look very fresh for a team that had an entire offseason to prepare. That is unfortunate because there is absolutely no doubt that Texas A&M is at this moment metaphorically sitting at a red intersection light and revving its engines until its entire vehicle is enshrouded in exhaust, just waiting to floor it. The Tide are particularly vulnerable to fast offenses, as my colleague Ben Cohen and I explored in a story this week, and A&M’s is one of the quickest and most talented of them all.

Texas A&M beat a decent Rice team in its season opener despite the first-half suspension of Manziel for a bizarre, autograph-related NCAA violation, then flattened Sam Houston State. Manziel has six touchdowns in two games, is completing 70% of his passes and looks as electric as ever. Today A&M regains three defensive players suspended for various team violations. That should make for a stellar matchup against the Tide, who at last look were favored by eight points.

Now the Aggies are on their own turf: a hulking, concrete monolith surrounded by a scorched flatland patrolled by thousands of cadets in polished knee-high boots with actual spurs. The forecast high is 93 degrees. So valued is the talent of yelling here that Friday night featured two such events: the “First Yell” concert and “Midnight Yell” yell practice. This is not a hospitable place to anything that’s not a Texas A&M football player.

Button up your duster and cinch your saddle. It could be a bumpy ride. (Here’s a quick guide to everything you need to know before kickoff.)

One question has dominated college football dating back to the very beginning of 2013: Can anyone stop Johnny Manziel? Can Bob Stoops, whose Oklahoma team was the first to face Mr. Football after he became the only freshman to win the Heisman Trophy? How about Manziel himself, who reportedly spent much of the summer wrestling with the heavy burden of fame? What about the NCAA, which gave a once-over to allegations that Manziel received cash under the table for a deluge of autographed memorabilia? The answers to those questions, respectively: No, no, and no.

Well, what about Alabama coach Nick Saban? The most successful coach in a generation is already 0-for-1 in attempting to bottle up the Texas A&M quarterback who darts around the football field like a housefly easily avoiding a rolled up magazine. Last year in Tuscaloosa, Manziel threw for 253 yards and ran for 92 more, totaling two touchdowns without turning the ball over in a 29-24 Aggies victory over the top-ranked Crimson Tide. Saban is a meticulous tactician with a ruthless defense that wins by leveraging football’s numbers game, but Johnny Manziel exists to break rules — the ones that define polite society, the NCAA and football.

There is a paradox that lies at the heart of the matchup between Manziel and Saban, and subsequently Texas A&M and Alabama: each individual was enormously successful last season — the player grabbing the Heisman, the coach the BCS Championship — but remains gnawingly unfulfilled. Johnny Football slain the snarling beast Alabama but still had to put up with taunts from sportswriters about championships. Saban became the first coach to win back-to-back titles since Tom Osborne 18 years earlier and acted, according to a close friend who spoke to GQ’s Warren St. John, as if it was a waste of his time. The big catch was still evading him: Alabama played game tape of the Texas A&M loss on a loop in its weight room all offseason.

The irony then is that today’s game offers no existential peace for either party. Manziel may once again defeat Alabama but be left holding a lesser trophy come January 2014. Saban may finally lasso Manziel, only to find himself having to deal with fellow dual-threat superstars like Oregon’s Marcus Mariotta, Ohio State’s Braxton Miller or Clemson’s Tajh Boyd. A battle will be won today in College Station, but that’s it.

As for us, we get to sit at home and enjoy a game between two of the best teams in college football. Our job is the easy one.

The average ticket price for this little old game closed this morning at $641, according to SeatGeek, which monitors the resale market. That price barely moved all week, the company said, because a limited supply of tickets resulted in surprisingly few transactions. With a capacity above 82,000, Kyle Field is apparently not big enough — which is why it’s expanding past the 100,000 mark, though not soon enough for those people to watch Johnny Manziel.

After writing last week about a bride who’s getting married in the College Station area today, defying all matrimonial protocol, I received an email from a bride who got married in the College Station area on Nov. 10, 2012, better known as the day the Aggies beat Alabama. She wanted me to pass along her encouraging experience: “It ended up being incredibly lucky for our Aggies last year, and I think she will find the same this year. It will make the war hymn all the more sweet at her wedding with a victory, and it will most likely be one of the best days of her Dad’s life, if he is anything like mine—marrying off a daughter and having his team beat the No. 1 team in the country all in one day.”

Not everyone feels that way, of course. Here’s another email I received from a Nebraska fan who grew up around Texas A&M: “Nothing, but nothing, is scheduled on Husker football dates. In fact, you don’t make political calls during those times, either. Could lose you votes.”

R. Bowen Loftin, the bow-tied president of Texas A&M, recently became a cult hero for many, including but not limited to myself, for mimicking Johnny Manziel shouting out OVO, the name of Drake’s crew. As it turns out, though, this was not Loftin’s first brush with Internet fame. Back in 2010, so long ago that the punch line known as the New York Jets were still a football team, Loftin was at a pep rally when he hit the dance known as The Dougie, flaunting his sartorial accessory as his own twist. “There was a really good beat going on that night,” he said, “so I got with the rhythm.”

Rachel, how much time have you spent looking for Drake in College Station? Because it’s probably not as much time as I’ve spent refreshing my “Drake College Station” search on Twitter over the last 24 hours.

To continue the Drake theme: today CBS will be featuring the “Johnny Cam,” a camera that will follow Manziel’s every move on and off the field. Drake’s upcoming album is aptly titled Nothing Was the Same.

And the pressbox is now swaying, disconcertingly so, as A&M students sing “Saw Varsity’s Horns Off.” I feel like that scene in “Jurassic Park” where you can see the liquid in the beverage moving from the dinosaur stomping.

Texas A&M substitutes after Manziel’s first pass to Evans — which allows Alabama to substitute. That’s the Tide’s best way of slowing down this hurry-up, and it’s also the reason why many up-tempo advocates refuse to substitute on offense.

And the Aggies pick up where they left off in the first half last year against Bama, knifing downfield: 7 plays, 84 yards, 2:39. One-yard touchdown pass from Manziel to big tight end Cameron Clear puts A&M on the board.

Everyone on the planet has heard of Johnny Manziel this offseason — I was pretty stunned the rabbi didn’t talk about him during Yom Kippur services this morning — but the thing about Johnny Football is that it’s easy to forget how much fun it is to watch him play football. He just made Nick Saban look like a geometry teacher trying to coach football.

The thing about that opening Aggies drive: how slow it was. Texas A&M needed 37 seconds between plays. In the first half of its game against Sam Houston State last week, Manziel used about 18 seconds to do his thing.

True freshman O.J. Howard — arguably the highest rated tight end recruit in a decade — is called for a false start. Bama is then called for a second straight false start. Second and 13 for Bama from inside A&M’s 10 yard line.

Alabama’s only sign of weakness heading into this season was its offensive line, where it had to replace three starters from last year’s team, all of whom are now in the NFL and generally gave A.J. McCarron protection only afforded to a U.S. president. But the inexperience up front is glaring so far this season.

Bama quickly reels off five consecutive plays of 10-plus yards, resulting in a touchdown on a beautiful fade to receiver Kevin Norwood. Bama staffers now feel comfortable creeping to within 25 feet of Nick Saban.

The Bama defense almost corrals Manziel on third down but he scrambles away and completes a pass to Evans, who runs near midfield. Bama’s defense is currently the living embodiment of the “sad trombone.”

Nick Saban likes to control games with defense, which is why Johnny Manziel scrambling is like cutting Alabama in the jugular. No team moves the ball on Alabama, and yet the Aggies are making the Tide look like Sam Houston State.

Not only does Saban obsess about defense, but the secondary is his specialty. So the fact that Manziel can find open receivers for big gains,sometimes with plays taking long seconds to develop, is remarkable. Manziel with 146 passing yards so far.

After 10 months of game-planning, Saban and Smart huddle in their College Station hotel last night, smoking cigars and sipping whiskey. “Hey, here’s something they’ll never see coming,” Saban says. “Let’s keep our best cornerback away from their best receiver.”

It’s possible that Bama was disoriented by the early crowd noise (two false starts on first drive) and is now settling down on offense. Remember: The Tide has never been to Kyle Field, since the Aggies just joined the Southeastern Conference before last season. Before that, I think these teams last played about 20 years ago.

And Saban goes with slickety trickery! A.J. McCarron unsheathes a fleaflicker, tossing to a running back, who pitches it back to McCarron, who lofts it 44 yards to DeAndrew White, who then steps into the end zone. A bold comeback by the Tide.

Johnny Manziel scrambles backwards 20 yards and then throws essentially a hail mary off his back foot. Naturally, an A&M receiver comes down with it for a third down conversion. If Nick Saban were a human he could find the dark humor in that completion.

I cannot believe I just saw that. Johnny Manziel was so tackled that he could taste the turf. Somehow, he shimmied away and launched a wobbly prayer of a pass, which found TAMU receiver Edard Pope for a 14-yard gain. First down.

Manziel badly overthrows a fade pass in the end zone and Bama’s Cyrus Jones comes down with the interception. Johnny Football’s insane scramble from a few minutes ago would now be irrelevant if we hadn’t invented YouTube.

The referees kick Alabama’s Ha Ha Clinton-Dix out of the game after calling him for a targeting foul but the booth overturns the ejection. A&M gains 15 yards on the play, and the refs illustrate how acutely absurd the targeting rule is.

The Tide decide to interrupt A.J. McCarron’s Peyton Manning impression by gashing the Aggie defense with running back T.J. Yeldon, who is arguably the best player on this offense. Being Alabama must be nice.

The most boring game in the world is Googling an Alabama player you’ve never heard of to see if the guy was a four or five star recruit. In other news, some running back named Kenyan Drake is slicing through A&M’s defense.

Last year at the half, Texas A&M led 20-14, Johnny Manziel had gone crazy on Bama’s defense and the Tide were reeling. This year, Alabama could go into halftime leading 28-14, having survived some of Manziel’s best shots.

Second half, does Manziel drag out his Heisman Trophy and just start braining people with it?

For those planning their bathroom/food breaks: Definitely watch some of the Texas A&M band if they show it at halftime. It’s giant, and its precision marching makes it one of the most impressive in college football.

Texas A&M is retiring the No. 44 jersey of John David Crow, the only player to win a Heisman Trophy while playing for Paul “Bear” Bryant, in 1957. That Crow did it while Bryant was coaching at Bama has to stick in the Tide’s craw. Alabama has just one Heisman winner — Mark Ingram in 2009 — while A&M has two: Crow, and some guy named Manziel.

I have no idea how Sunseri made it into the end zone there. I think he was actually running in reverse at one point. It’s unclear if A&M’s offense realizes it is indeed allowed to tackle. Aggies coaches might want to brush up on that.

Bama corner John Fulton, who has been victimized by Mike Evans throughout the game, gets called for a pass interference. I’m not Mel Kiper III, but I don’t think Fulton is going to extend Bama’s two year streak streak of having corners drafted in the first round.

The pressbox announcer just said today’s crowdis 87,596, just the fourth-largest crowd in Kyle Field history. For all of its hype, I thought we would go 1,000 over that and have a fire-marshal scandal.

Bama throws the ball on 3rd and 4, and A&M manages to bat it away. If Nick Saban had a sense of humor, you could argue that the Tide are just toying with the Aggies. But since he doesn’t, some wire inside his brain is close to catching fire.

Manziel throws a 12-yard TD to Malcolm Kennedy, bringing the score to 42-28 Bama. This would be more interesting if anyone on Earth had confidence in A&M’s defense ability to string together multiple stops.

Time, the enemy of Alabama last season, is now working against Texas A&M. Aggies’ defense needs to do what it hasn’t done enough today and get a quick stop to get the ball back to Manziel. The longer Alabama holds the ball, the longer Texas A&M’s odds of a comeback.

Texas A&M’s fans, so insane that 50,000 of them showed up for Midnight Yell practice last night, are known as the 12th Man. Texas A&M’s defense could use 13th, 14th and 15th Men to stop this offense right now.

Bama’s T.J. Yeldon gets hammered by two Aggies on A&M’s two yard line and fumbles. A&M recovers. They have just awoken from a coma and have no idea whey they are or how they got there. But they are alive.

Manziel twirls around the backfield and throws up a desperate heave to Mike Evans, who…. of course catches the ball at the three yard line. Evans is officially in “Can we see you birth certificate, son?” territory.

Manziel throws a touchdown on a nice little corner route by Malcolm Kennedy. A&M is down 7 with :15 seconds left, but if they can somehow recover the onside kick they have LeBron James at wide receiver.

Though A&M will rue today’s loss, they only need to look back to last year’s win over Alabama for inspiration. It was Bama, of course, that ended up hoisting the national title at the end of the year, and with two and a half months left in the season the Aggies are still firmly in the BCS championship race.

Comments (5 of 33)

Thank you for another excellent article. Where else may just anyone get that kind of info in such a perfect method of writing? I've a presentation subsequent week, and I'm at the search for such info.

7:30 pm October 16, 2013

shooter4805 wrote:

Bottom line. Regardless of the amount of yards he put up, Johnny lol football lost the game when he threw 2 costly pics. Deal with it.

12:28 am September 15, 2013

aajayunlimited wrote:

THE MAGICAL MANZIEL PLAY WASN'T SO MAGICAL WHEN YOU CONSIDER THAT PAGAN WAS TRYING TO AVOID A HORSE-COLLAR PENALTY! HE HELD UP, SO MANZIEL GOT AWAY! THAT PASS WAS REALLY GREAT, THOUGH, UNDER ALL THAT DIRESS!

Now, this game reminds me of the Ali Vs. Norton saga. Fight one(Game one) was average, where Norton made the smashing(winning) punches and outlasted Ali who fought well considering that he a broken jaw in round 2! That fight(game) was in doubt until the very end! Ali lost a close decision; even though, he had a broken jaw(3 TOs to 0; outscored 20-0) in round 2. The second fight was an all-time great game where from the point that Ali establishes control, Norton, through unorthodox means(landing hurt punches to get 2 point rounds when he was really far behind) made up the difference by round 11(of a 12 round fight). In round 12, Ali--although Norton would land some truly smashing punches late--won this important round, because he was impressive throughout the 12th. As it turns out, the second was much, much better, but it was as schematically similiar as two fights can be.

Manziel played the most unbelievable game ever and that's a crass understatement! Alabama played a better game this time around, because the TOs were just 2 to 1 whereas they were 0 to 3 against us. We also got stops when we needed them and made offense at the most critical points of the game(early after 14-0, scoring the 28 unanswered points; after the Yeldon fumble--sounds cliche--they score--also cliche for the the game late--we got the score late that we needed! We needed TDs and that's what we got! Switch FGs for TDs twice and we lose. Will LSU have the pass rush that they did last year? If they do, then that will tell how much he's grown as a player. As for us--as any other team without a pass rush--we had to outscore them and hope that we could get enough stops in there and not turn the ball over. That's exactly what happened! In the first game, all of that did not happen. So, we had a chance to and did lose! LSU, A&M, Ole Miss, UGA, Oregon, Stanford, Clemson, and/or FSU should be some really great games going forward! Those are the games to watch amongst ourselves. Great game, A&M!!!

12:11 am September 15, 2013

Winner wrote:

You lost

11:36 pm September 14, 2013

pinktacobandit wrote:

Really roll tide roll? For the past year all I've been hearing about is a revenge game where bama was going to beat A&M by 5 touchdowns, but they escaped with a one touchdown victory,and act like it was a blowout. And as for the spoiled brat you call manziel, he still put up record numbers on the tides defense. Roll tide roll my ass.

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